an assembly-room.

"That is like the Lewis people," Sheila said with a laugh: she had
not been in as happy a mood for many a day. "I asked you to bring one
peat, and of course you brought two. Tell the truth, Mairi: could you
have forced yourself to bring one peat?"

"I wass thinking it was safer to bring sa two," replied Mairi,
blushing all over the fair and pretty face.

And indeed, there being two peats, Sheila thought she might as well
try an experiment with one. She crumbled down some pieces, put them
on a plate, lit them, and placed the plate outside the open window,
on the sill. Presently a new, sweet, half-forgotten fragrance came
floating in, and Sheila almost forgot the success of the experiment in
the half-delighted, half-sad reminiscences called up by the scent
of the peat. Mairi failed to see how any one could willfully smoke
a house--any one, that is to say, who did not save the smoke for his
thatch. And who was so particular as Sheila had been about having the
clothes come in from the washing dried so that they should not retain
this very odor that seemed now to delight her?

At last the room was finished, and Sheila contemplated it with much
satisfaction. The table was laid, and on the white cloth stood the
bottles most familiar to Borva. The peat-smoke still lingered in the
air: she could not have wished anything to be better.

Then she went off to look after the luncheon, and Mairi was permitted
to go down and explore the mysteries of the kitchen. The servants
were not accustomed to this interference and oversight, and might have